Posted on 06/06/2005 11:16:07 AM PDT by NutCrackerBoy
He's the Bulldog of Bergen, the Pride of New Jersey, the Hope of the Irish: James J. Braddock, has-been, might-have-been, and struggling breadwinner. As Russell Crowe portrays this real-life figure from the Depression era in Cinderella Man, he lopes down the sidewalk with his eyebrows tented in mild surprise and his mouth hanging slightly ajar. This Cinderella still has dust behind his ears.
Braddock is no ball of fire. He's not motivated by a passion for boxing, like Maggie in last fall's hit, Million Dollar Baby. He doesn't even have the horsy competitiveness of Seabiscuit, subject of Hollywood's last inspirational-underdog-of-the-Depression venture. If Braddock is an underdog, he wears it well: He's doglike in his loyalty, gentleness, and nobility of spirit. When life gives him a kick in the pants, he accepts it uncomplainingly; When it tosses him a bone, he's sincerely grateful.
How grateful is shown by a scene midway through. Things have gotten so tough for Jim and his wife Mae (Renee Zellwegger) that they can no longer keep their three children at home; without money for grocery and heating bills, the kids are getting sick. (In an earlier scene, we had seen Mae stretching a bottle of milk by adding water.) The children are farmed out to live with extended family. Regretfully, Braddock goes down to the relief office and signs up for the dole so he can bring them home. But then he wins a fight, and returns to the same office. He plops down a roll of bills in front of the cashier. Later, when a reporter asks him about this, he shrugs it off. "This is a great country, a country that helps a man when he's in trouble. I thought I should return it."
It's exactly this mildness, this simplicity, that makes Cinderella Man such a knockout. Director Ron Howard controls the elements so masterfully that the film is deeply emotionally satisfying. In itself, the story was dangerously sweet: one-time promising boxer slips from the spotlight, then gets another chance, and, fighting to save his family from poverty, rises to win the championship. If Braddock had been a bright-eyed, stalwart hunk, spouting off about justice and courage, the film would have been unbearably tedious. Self-effacing Crowe, on the other hand, draws you in; there always seems to be some further secret in the character of this quiet, curiously solitary, man. And a wife who was a quick-witted glamour gal, badly disguised under a 30's hat, would have torpedoed credibility. Zellwegger balances Crowe perfectly, with her pinched expression and Fran Drescher accent.
But the linchpin of this terrific cast is Paul Giamatti as renowned trainer Joe Gould. The standard order calls for an outwardly abrasive cigar-chewing grumpas, who in a late scene gets teary-eyed and reveals a heart of gold. No such folderol for Giamatti. He looks like he's been molded out of Play-Doh, his domed head pinched and pulled upward, and bringing everything along with it, indomitably buoyant. As usual, he's irresistibly watchable, yet without overwhelming Crowe's quiet guilelessness; the two seem a perfect match.
And when he pounds on the canvas, shouting instructions to Braddock during the fight, boy, it sure sounded like good advice to me. I hadn't before seen that a good trainer is primarily an analyst of movement, continually evaluating the strengths of each fighter as the bout progresses. Giamatti showed how active a trainer has to be during a fight, not just by his delivery of sharp-eyed coaching, but by his own tense physicality. And the lines he gets! As a wealthy promoter says, after he's been overcome by Gould's silver-tongued persuasion, "They oughta put your mouth in the circus."
Howard doesn't short-change us emotionally, however; his restraint has its limits. When Braddock is failing during a fight, he sees blurry images — a bread line, his kids' empty beds, a stack of bills stamped "Past Due" — and begins to recover his strength. Likewise, when Mae is taunted by a fighter who has killed two men in the ring, she sees images of a coffin spattered with dirt, and a lone widow walking across a cemetery. You might think this kind of overly literal depiction would be too broad but, actually, it turns out to be just about right.
The character of this bad-guy fighter, Max Baer (Craig Bierko), is not overly subtle; he sports two floozies, openly signals his plan to kill Braddock like he did the others, and in the clinches murmurs in Braddock's ear, "Does your wife call my name at night?" Of course, this only makes Braddock fight harder, which is obvious and inevitable and not a bit less effective for that. There are 35,000 in attendance at this fight, and every single one is rooting for Braddock; apparently, Baer the World Champion has no fans. During the big fight Mae goes to church and finds it full of people praying for her husband; the priest explains, "They all think that Jim's fighting for them." Well, that's O.K. too. You need a little bit of ham with the mashed potatoes.
It's often observed that it's easy to depict evil in stories; what's difficult is depicting good. The Phantom of the Opera is fascinating, and Prince Charming is a bore. But Cinderella Man accomplishes that difficult task, giving us in Jim Braddock a character who is genuinely and believably good. It does this, not by showing dark sides to "balance" his character (the usual gambit) but by depicting him as humble. Braddock does extraordinarily heroic things, but in a way that communicates that it's just the normal way a man should act.
Cinderella Man is not really a movie about boxing, it's a movie about what it means to be a man. In the character of Jim Braddock, we can read what today's audiences are wistful for: a man who works hard to support his wife and kids, who teaches his kids to be honest, who communicates his delight in his wife with every glance. As Mae says to Jim in a late scene, "You're the Bulldog of Bergen, the Pride of New Jersey, you're everybody's hope, you're your kids' hero, and the champion of my heart." Do they make them like that any more?
Frederica Mathewes-Green writes regularly for NPR's Morning Edition, Beliefnet.com, Christianity Today, and other publications. She is the author of Gender: Men, Women, Sex and Feminism, among other books.
Too little, too late.
I heard Russel was arrested for trying to KO a hotel clerk yesterday.
Saw the film over the weekend with the wife. We both liked it.
I'm not prepared to say it will have been the best-directed film of the year, but I predict liberal Hollywood will punish it at Oscar time.
My wife and I had a rare spare evening to catch a movie without the kids.
It was this or Star Wars..I wish we would have seen Cinderella man...star wars wasnt nearly as good as I heard.
The wife kept elbowing me, as I had a tendency to giggle at inappropriate moments. A poor movie, IMHO. It shines only in comparison with the two preceding, which were truly awful.
But then I was never a fan of even the original trilogy.
I thought Paul Giamatti should get a best supporting actor nomination for his portrayal of Joe Gould, Braddock's trainer.
I thought Yoda was the highlight of the whole movie.
but Ive seen him before. The 1st movie to come out was still the best..I guess 20 years of special effects since then sort of makes it ho hum.
The plot stunk..it was as if they were just trying to tie up all the lose ends instead of making it interesting.
The dog fights in the beginning were were pretty cool but renting the dvd would have been a better route.
It did beat a chick flick, so not all was lost.
But back on subject I look forward to watching Cinderella man..though Im sure it cant compare to Gladiator.
brawling punk actor plays good guy- big reach
Hi diddle dee dee
an actor's life for me
"Truly awful" on the first two is kind of harsh, don't you think?
I mean..Gigli..that Bennifer bomb ranks as truly awful. Compared to that SW3 deserves and oscar.
I did have one reaction that surprised me. About half-way through the film (2 hr. 14 minutes), I had a kind of epiphany. I realized I was watching something that did not exist any longer. Yes, the setting is the 1930s, and yes, that was 75 years ago. But, it's not just the passage of years. Cultures have lives that far exceed the lives of those who live within them. The culture I was watching in the film is not the one in which I live today. Indeed, it's difficult to suppose they are even related in any way more than the mere succession of years.
For the first time that I can recall, I knew I was watching a culture that had passed away. I can't recall ever sensing this before. When Hollywood portrays a past era, it seems inevitably to squirt something anachronistic into it, usually in the form of modern values that would never have been around in that by-gone era, or if so, then not in the form in which they appear in the screenplay. This is why I hate Bible movies. No one can leave the background alone; it must always be updated, embellished from a modern point of view.
But Cinderella Man is different. It all hangs together. This or that scene, this or that plot device, this or that comment -- which would sound trite, or banal, or ridiculously pollyanna-ish in any modern setting -- they all fit together naturally in this film. I wasn't alive back then, but I know a lot of people who were, and what I've gleaned from them about that time validates what Ron Howard portrays in the film -- not just the characters, but the entire cultural matrix of the time.
And that is what I realized was utterly gone. Today is the brave new world.
You'll enjoy this film.
i thought the rules stated, hit with gloves only, not telephones...
I kind of like honesty in "reality based" movies. Max Baer was no killer (as depicted). Howard needed a "bad" guy to make the hero look more heroic. It was unnecessary and cheap, aside from the fact that it indicates a lack of skill on the writer's part.
Russel Crowe, Rene Zellwegger, and Paul Giamatti should all get Academy Awards. Great Movie. Very well directed and acted.
Right!
My different but related reaction was that this film shows that the Greatest Generation "had the stuff." And it does it realistically.
We know for a historical fact that the Americans, despite being weakened by a depression, went out and defeated enemies that had buku strength and momentum. It wasn't luck.
That era is gone, but I am not convinced that its spirit is gone forever. Our postmodern way of looking at and talking about things tends to deny the reality of spirit. That is not only the fault of liberalism.
Actually, we had bailed out of Monster-in-law, which was even worse, IMO. Unappealing actors in unattractive roles.
Im just glad the yaya sisterhood or some other chick flick wasnt out that my better half insisted on seeing.
Just watched what has to be the best movie I've seen in five years, and a movie that would already have to find a place in the top ten of all time. If you want to see a film that captures the essence of the American dream, with wonderful performances, especially from Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti, and a conclusion that makes you feel like you've just been at the greatest live sporting event of your life, you've got to see this. It's an homage to what used to be known as old-fashioned virtues without ever being heavy-handed or didactic. I challenge anyone to keep a lump out of their throat when Crowe as Braddock finds out his son stole a salami from the local butcher (the family is essentially starving) and then makes the boy take it back after telling him "we don't steal, never," or is forced to finally go on assistance, making it plain it's the lowest thing he's ever had to do (he takes the money back, later, in another great scene). This is just a great, great movie, as you could guess given some of the sneering reviews by some of the more liberal reviewers. Little Opie has made one helluva film about courage, honor, manly virtues, and his own belief in America. Hollywood will probably never forgive him for it, but everyone else should be grateful for this gift. This is one you don't want to miss.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.